"I thought this was a restaurant?" the gang leader said suspiciously.
"And I thought you were the welcome wagon." Roger snorted in exasperation. "Open your eyes, Tenku. I'm not muscling your turf. So don't try to muscle mine. Among other things, I've got more muscle." And more brains, Roger didn't add.
"How handsomely?" Tenku asked, still suspicious.
"Five hundred credits a week."
"No way!" Tenku retorted. "Five thousand, maybe."
"Impossible," Roger snapped. "I have to make a profit out of this place. Seven hundred, max."
"Why don't I believe that? Forty-five hundred."
They settled on eighteen hundred a week.
"If one of my guests gets so much as panhandled..."
"It'll be taken care of," Tenku replied. "And if you're late..."
"Then come on by for a meal," Roger said, "and we'll square up. And wear a tie."
Thomas Catrone, Sergeant Major, IMC, retired, president and chief bottle washer of Firecat, LLC, was clearing off his mail—deleting all the junk, in other words—when his communicator chimed.
Catrone was a tall man, with gray hair in a conservative cut and blue eyes, who weighed just a few kilos over what he'd weighed when he joined the Imperial Marines lo these many eons ago. He was well over a hundred and twenty, and not nearly the hulking brute he'd once been. But he was still in pretty decent shape. Pretty decent.
He flicked on the com hologram and nodded at the talking head that popped out. Nice blonde. Good face. Just enough showing to see she was pretty well stacked. Probably an avatar.
"Mr. Thomas Catrone?"
"Speaking."
"Mr. Catrone, have you been checking your mail?"
"Yes."
"Then are you aware that you and your wife have won an all-expenses-paid trip to Imperial City?"
"I don't like the Capital," Catrone said, reaching for the disconnect button.
"Mr. Catrone," the blonde said, half-desperately. "You're scheduled to stay at the Lloyd-Pope Hotel. It's the best hotel in the City. There are three plays scheduled, and an opera at the Imperial Civic Center, plus dinner every night at the Marduk House! You're just going to turn that down?"
"Yes."
"Have you asked your wife if you should turn it down?" the blonde asked acerbically.
Tomcat's hand hovered over the button, index finger waving in the air. Then it clenched into a fist and withdrew. He rattled his fingers on the desktop and frowned at the hologram.
"Why me?" he asked suspiciously.
"You were entered in a drawing at the last Imperial Special Operations Association meeting. Don't you remember?"
"No. They've generally got all sorts of drawings... but this one is pretty odd for them."
"The Association uses the Ching-Wrongly Travel Agency for all its bookings," the blonde said. "Part of that was the lottery for this trip."
"And I won it?" He raised one eyebrow and peered at her suspiciously again.
"Yes."
"This isn't a scam?"
"No, sir," she said earnestly. "We're not selling anything."
"Well..." Catrone scratched his chin. "I guess I'd better schedule—"
"There is one small... issue," the blonde said uncomfortably. "It's... prescheduled. For next week."
"Next week?" Catrone stared at her incredulously. "Who's going to take care of the horses?"
"Sorry?" The blonde wrinkled her brow prettily. "You've sort of lost me, there."
"Horses," Catrone repeated, speaking slowly and distinctly. "Four-legged mammals. Manes? Hooves? You ride them. Or, in my case raise them."
"Oh."
"So you just want me to drop everything and go to the Capital?"
"Unless you want to miss out on this one-of-a-kind personalized adventure," the woman said brightly.
"And if I do, Ching-Wrongly doesn't have to pay out?"
"Errrr..." The woman hesitated.
"Hah! Now I know what the scam is!" Tomcat pointed one finger at the screen and shook it. "You're not getting me that easily! What about travel arrangements? I can't make it in my aircar in less than a couple of days."
"Suborbital flight from Ulan-Batorr Spaceport is part of the package," the blonde said.
"Okay, let's work out the details," Catrone said, tilting back in his desk chair. "My wife loves the opera; I hate it. But you can gargle peanut butter for three hours if you have to, so what the hell..."
"What a horribly suspicious man," Despreaux said, closing the connection.
"He has reason to be," Roger pointed out. "He's got to be under some sort of surveillance. Contacting him directly at all was a bit of a risk, but no more than anything else we considered."
The bunker behind the warehouse had the capability to artfully spoof the planetary communications network. Anyone backtracking the call would find it coming from the Ching-Wrongly offices, where a highly paid source was more than willing to back up the story.
"You think this is really going to work?" Despreaux asked.
"O ye of little faith," Roger replied with a grin. "I just wonder what our opposition is up to."
"And how is the Empress?" Adoula asked.
"Docile," New Madrid said, sitting down and crossing his long legs at the ankle. "As she should be."
Lazar Fillipo, Earl of New Madrid, was the source of most of Roger's good looks. Just short of two meters tall, long, lean, and athletically trim, he had a classically cut face and shoulder length blond hair he'd recently had modded to prevent graying. He also had a thin mustache that Adoula privately thought looked like a yellow caterpillar devouring his upper lip.
"I could wish we'd been able to find out what got dumped in her toot," Adoula said.
"And in John's," New Madrid replied with a nod. "But it was flushed, whatever it was, before we could stop it. Pity. I'd expected the drugs to hold back the dead man's switch longer than they did. Long enough for our... physical persuasion to properly motivate him to tell us what we wanted to know, at least."
"Always assuming it was the 'dead man's switch,'" Adoula pointed out a bit acidly. "The suicide protocols can also be deliberately activated, you know." And, he thought, given what you were doing to him—in front of his mother—that's a hell of a lot more likely than any "Dead Man's Switch," isn't it, Lazar? I wonder what you'd have done to Alexandra herself by now... if you didn't need her alive even more than I do?
"Always possible, I suppose." New Madrid pursed his lips poutingly for several seconds, then shrugged. "Well, I imagine it was inevitable, actually. And he had to go in the end, anyway, didn't he? It was worth a try, and Alexandra might always have volunteered the information herself, given that he was all she had left by that point. On the other hand, I've sometimes wondered if she could have told us even if she'd wanted to. The security protocols on their toots were quite extraordinary, after all."
"True. True." New Madrid pursed his lips poutingly for several seconds, then shrugged. "I suppose it was inevitable, actually. The security protocols on their toots were quite extraordinary, after all."
The Earl, Adoula reflected, had an absolutely astonishing talent for stating—and restating—the obvious.
"You wanted to see me?" the prince asked.
"Thomas Catrone is taking a trip to the capital."
"Oh?" Adoula leaned back in his float chair.
"Oh," New Madrid said. "He's supposedly won some sort of all-expenses-paid trip. I checked, and there was such a lottery from the Special Operations Association. Admittedly, anyone who won it would be worth being suspicious of. But I'm particularly worried about Catrone. You should have let me take him out."